Tuesday, June 30, 2026

HBO Rock Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Grabs Few Viewers as the World Turned to Biden Victory Speech

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Talk about bad timing!

At the exact moment the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s lame induction ceremony was starting in Cleveland, Joe Biden was coming to the microphone in Wilmington, Delaware.

What do you think people watched? The HBO special or President-elect Biden making his victory speech?

Uh. That’s right. Fewer people watched the virtual RRHOF ceremony than saw the farm report last Saturday at 8pm.

The Hall special managed to find just 283,000 viewers. Biden? North of 25 million. Oh well.

Maybe it was the inductees: Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, The Notorious B.I.G., T-Rex, and Ahmet Ertegun Award honorees Jon Landau and Irving Azoff. Three are dead (Whitney, Biggie, T Rex). The Doobie Brothers were 10 to 15 years too late. Depeche Mode? Ok. Nine Inch Nails? Really? Landau and Azoff certainly deserved it.

But the RRHOF induction ceremony is largely irrelevant. So many great acts from the 70s are missing that it’s become kind of a joke.

Anyway, it’s over. Again. It will start all over again soon. Who’s not in? Sting as a solo act, Carole King ditto, Carly Simon, Billy Preston, Todd Rundgren, Rufus and Carla Thomas, J Geils Band, Motown great Mary Wells, and so on and so forth.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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